It’s not just this gun, it’s the whole shipment …
Summary: The FBI investigates the theft of a poorly designed high-powered weapons shipment with the help of a local arms dealer
Original air date: January 15, 2010 (USA)
Written by: Andrew Dettman
Directed by: Gwyneth Horder-Payton
Opening numbers:
28: Global armed conflicts
43: Military governments
600: Million automatic weapons
1,100: Rounds per minute
Family Concepts: (character development)
- Don suggest Robin move in with him so they don’t have to keep splitting time between apartments
- Amita does not want to be a June bride
- Don proposes marriage to Robin. She turns him down … for now
- Liz considers herself a rebound for Don after his first break up with Robin
- Alan picks October 9 as the wedding date for Charlie and Amita.
- October 9 is Alan and Margaret’s wedding date.
Episode Quotes:
- Liz: An incredibly popular and expensive math journal?
Charlie: All right you know what I mean. - Don: What the hell happened?
- Liz: Don’t ask me. When Charlie started talking about 4-D mapping I just did the smile and nod thing.
Episode Synopsis:
LAPD asks for Charlie’s help after a bullet kills an innocent bystander; they need his help to find where the gun was fired. The FBI is also involved and they soon find the location at a warehouse belonging to Arvin Lindell. David, Colby and Liz are at the warehouse when Lindell shows up and starts shooting a very high power automatic weapon. No one is hurt, and Colby is able to trace the gun to a Belgium manufacturer whose paperwork stated the guns were headed for Saudi Arabia, however they never made it to the Middle East.
Colby enlists the help of a local arms dealer, Randall Priest, to help the FBI figure where the guns are and why they are in LA at all when they were supposed to be half a world away. David does not want anything to do with Priest and feels the FBI is losing face dealing with such a person. Priest offers to help, without naming any names if the FBI can help get one of his shipments out of Customs. Robin, gets his container moving again and Priest explains why shipments go through US ports and that Lindell used to work at the docks and probably accepted the gun as payment.
Otto glances at a schematic of the gun in question and quickly works out the gun design is flawed and it won’t withstand long periods of firing. Otto’s theory is proven when a film crew finds Lindell’s body in a tunnel, killed by exploding shrapnel from the gun. Charlie works out 22 possible containers soon to be shipped overseas that might contain the guns, unfortunately the search turns up nothing and later that night two more of the rifles are used in a drive by shooting that kills or injures eleven people.
Liz realizes that while the guns are useless in a battlefield situations, they are perfect for street crime as they aren’t fired as often or as quickly. She and Colby explain this to Charlie who can’t believe his math is wrong and feels guilty for not finds the guns sooner. They point out he had the wrong data and ask him to do another search, this time for containers staying in the US.
David shows Priest the results of the previous night’s shooting and hopes the man has a change of heart. Colby also finds a report of a guns hot wound at a local hospital and the FBI brings in Eddie Leyva for questioning. Eddie’s younger brother, Victor, owns a car matching the description of the one seen at the drive-by shooting; Colby and Liz convince Eddie to give up the name of the person who sold them the guns in exchange for a chance for Eddie to call his brother and make him surrender peacefully. Eddie agrees and tells them they bought the guns from “Whitey” so named because one of his eyes is milky.
Priest tries to make a deal with Lonnie “Whitey” Moses for the guns. Moses it appears is double crossing Priest, however Priest had made a deal with the FBI to be in on the buy to arrest Moses.